Charoen offered S$8.88 a share for the property and
beverages company in September. A group led by Overseas Union
Enterprise Ltd. on Nov. 15 countered with a S$9.08 per share
bid. Both have until Jan. 21 for final offers under Singapore
takeover law, said F&N spokeswoman Elaine Lim.

Fraser & Neave shares have traded above both offers in a
sign investors expect the bidding war to escalate. Charoen
agreed to buy a 22 percent stake in F&N in July, setting off a
fight for the company’s soft drink and property assets and
prompting the sale of its beer unit to Heineken NV.

“The possibility of a bidding war remains,” said Goh Han
Peng, an analyst at DMG & Partners Securities, a unit of
Malaysia’s OSK Holdings Bhd. “It needs a trigger from either
parties. Theoretically, both parties can raise their bids toward
S$10 a share.”

F&N shares fell 0.1 percent to close at S$9.69 in Singapore
trading yesterday.

Thai Offer

Charoen’s offer valued the rest of the company at about
S$8.9 billion on Sept. 13, the day his TCC Assets offered S$8.88
a share for the 69.6 percent of F&N it didn’t already control.

TCC moved the closing date on that offer to 5:30 p.m. on
Jan. 15, according to a stock exchange statement yesterday.

OUE, a Singapore-based property company, has enlisted Kirin
Holdings Co., Japan’s largest drinks maker, in its bid. OUE
would get the company’s property business and Kirin would take
the food and beverage unit.

Kirin has agreed to tender its 14.8 percent stake in F&N,
OUE has said. The Japanese brewer, Asia’s biggest beverage
maker, will offer S$2.7 billion for F&N’s food and beverage
business, if OUE wins enough support to complete the takeover.

F&N has said it had committed to pay the OUE consortium a
break-up fee of as much as S$50 million if a competing offer is
successful.

Charoen, 68, has a net worth of $9.3 billion, according to
data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His unlisted
business, TCC Group, has a real estate unit. Thai Beverage PCL,
which sells the Chang brand of beer, gets almost all its revenue
from its home market.

“Its unlikely Charoen is going to walk away at this
stage,” said Goh. “Both the real estate and F&B businesses for
F&N are important to him.”

OUE Executive Chairman Stephen Riady is a son of Mochtar
Riady, who controls Indonesia’s Lippo Group, with businesses
ranging from real estate and financial services to food across
Asia. If successful, it would be the biggest ever acquisition of
a Singapore-based company, according to data compiled by
Bloomberg.

OUE, which gets about 65 percent of its revenue from hotel
operations, plans at least one investment a year in Singapore to
boost property holdings that include office towers, luxury
apartments and malls, Stephen Riady said in an interview in
August.

Heineken NV won control of F&N’s beer unit, the maker of
Tiger beer, in a deal that closed in November.